The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (83 page)

That pain helped her cling to herself. It reminded her that she was not Joan; that she was prepared to accept the cost of her own actions.

She had caused this crisis by the extravagance of her choices. Uncounted ur-viles had been slain, and most of the Waynhim would follow. Her friends would die. The Staff of Law might be destroyed. She herself might fall in spite of her powers, abandoning Jeremiah and the Land to Lord Foul's malice. And all because she had risked leaving her proper time.

Set beside the potential cost of failure, the anguish and evil of creating a
caesure
were prices that she was willing to pay.

Somewhere beyond her attention, emerald flared and raved, adumbrating malice into the betrayed night. The Waynhim were driven back. The waves of their theurgy, shock after shock like combers in a high wind, were barely adequate to defend them: they could not stand their ground. The explosions of vitriol from the ur-viles had become pitifully brief and slight; too small to hamper the Demondim. The bitter gleaming of the attackers swept resistance aside.

Watching the doomed contest, Mahrtiir and his mount could no longer restrain themselves. Howling defiance, the Manethrall launched his Ranyhyn like thunder down the hillside. At once, Pahni and Naharahn pounded after him, chased unsteadily by Bhapa on Whrany. Pahni added her girlish shout to Mahrtiir's stentorian roar; but Bhapa was silent.

Only Whrany's fleet skill enabled the injured Cord to keep his seat. Unable to use his garrote, and fatally weak, he could not fight. Nevertheless he raced after his Manethrall and Pahni, trusting the hooves of his mount to strike for him.

Liand might have followed the Ramen into battle, but his responsibility for the Staff
held him back. Stave did not move from Linden's side. And Anele remained where he was, consumed by his useless imprecations.

If the onslaught came near Linden, she would be defended only by an untried Stonedownor, a madman, and one lone
Haruchai.

With some part of her mind, she must have been aware of her companions and the Demondim; must have felt the proximity of the Illearth Stone and slaughter. Her sense of urgency increased moment by moment, and white fire from Covenant's ring spired higher into the dark, shedding a stark luminescence across the bare hillsides and the thronging battleground.

Nevertheless her peril only fed her concentration, sending her deeper into her task.

It was hard. God, it was hard! Intending to violate time, she violated as well every instinct for healing and health which had shaped her life.
Caesures
were evil: they attacked the fundamental structures which made existence possible. And she had committed herself to wholeness rather than ruin.

Still she did not hold back. She knew the depth of the Despiser's malice. She felt the lust and hatred of the Demondim, and the destructiveness of the Illearth Stone. She understood what would happen if she allowed such hungers to feed unopposed, and her whole being rose up in repudiation.

And Liand held the Staff of Law in her name: the only instrument of power in all the Land which might be able to halt or contain the vast wrong of a Fall. If he did not fail her, she could hope to impose limits on the harm she meant to cause.

Guilt is power. Only the damned can be saved.

When she was ready, she cast a silent appeal to Hyn and all of the Ranyhyn. Without them, she would be unable to reach her necessary goal.

Then she released a slash of silver flame which sundered the night.

Through the riven dark, chaos tumbled forth. A tremendous migraine swirl of distortion appeared in the night, destructive as a tornado, and maddening as a swarm of wasps. It seethed with force as though every link and interstice of material reality had been torn apart.

Remembered agony squalled in Linden's nerves as she saw that she had succeeded.

The
caesure
boiled no more than a stone's throw to her right. It seemed to drift toward her with a kind of hideous nonchalance, sure of its might, and in no hurry to devour.

Stave barked a warning, and Liand called her name; but she hardly heard them. With a gesture of wild magic, a sweep of fire, she redirected the Fall, sent it sprawling like an avalanche in slow motion down toward the heart of the battle. At the same time, she scourged it with flame so that it swelled over the ground, growing wider until it was vast enough to consume the entire horde of the Demondim. Then she urged Hyn into motion after it.

As the mare stretched into a gallop, Linden shouted in a voice of argence,
“Come now!”
praying that the Waynhim and the ur-viles would be able to hear her through the tumult.

At the same time, she prayed that Mahrtiir and his Cords still lived, and could respond.

Stave and Liand rode at her sides. Silver fire lit the stern concentration on the Master's visage: he looked like a man who believed that he could determine the outcome of Linden's gamble by sheer force of will. Liand clung grimly to the Staff, holding it ready. His fear of the Fall glared in his eyes, but he did not try to restrain his mount.

Behind them ran Hrama, bearing Anele whether or not the old man wished to follow.

Linden glimpsed Waynhim racing toward her on all fours. Among them, a few ur-viles appeared, splashed with blood as black as night. As Hyn pounded among the massed forces of the Demondim, more Ranyhyn joined her, two or three. But in the light of Covenant's ring, Linden caught only a brief flash of them. She could not be sure that more than one of them still carried a rider.

Then she plunged into the
caesure
as though it were a lake of nightmares.

In an instant, utter anguish seemed to swallow her whole. And as the roiling torment closed over her head, she began to drown—

At that moment, she had no reason to believe she had not brought death to all that she held dear.

 The unspeakable pain of the Fall was the same: the disorientation: the sensory insanity. She was trapped as she had been once before in the simultaneous shattering of too many realities. Every moment which would ever come and go in the
caesure
's path was torn apart and flung at her like a bleeding gobbet; and every scrap of time's shredded flesh as it struck her became a burrowing insect, a wasp or chigger
driven mad by dissociation and avid to lay its ruinous eggs within her. At the same time, all perceptible meaning and structure were wiped away, leaving behind only white emptiness and illimitable cold.

Drowning in all the world's distress at once, Linden could easily have perished, suffocated by icy formication and loss. She could just as easily have been driven mad. But even madness and death required causality, sequence, interconnection; and the Fall had severed every link which would have made such consequences possible.

Yet this experience was essentially unlike her first such immersion. She did not need to compel the current of distortion backward, into the past. Nor was she required to trust that the ur-viles would impose her will upon it. Instead she could let the terrible forces of the
caesure
carry her forward according to their own peculiar logic. The Earthpowerful instincts of the Ranyhyn would provide for her redemption.

In addition, she was spared another encounter with Joan Covenant's demented grief. Somewhere Joan still stood among her attending
skest,
reaching out with wild magic and self-loathing to name her endless pains. But she had not created this Fall, and did not occupy it. Her madness played no part in its ravening.

And Linden had one other advantage as well. Covenant's ring still shone like a beacon through the fabric of her shirt, lighting her way to survival. Wild magic was in some sense as disruptive as the
caesure,
untrammeled by restriction. For that reason, it had the power to violate the strictures of time. For the same reason, however, white gold formed the keystone of the Arch of Time. Its unfettered passion anchored the paradox which made finite existence possible within the infinite universe.

Similarly the hot blaze of Linden's heart anchored her within herself, enabling her to continue to be who she was when every mote and particle of her specific being had been torn asunder.

Duration could not exist within the Fall. Nothing was possible there except devouring pain and infinite cold and devastation. Therefore no tangible interval passed before Hyn galloped free of agony, bearing Linden out into a flood of sunlight and dazzled blindness.

They had arrived on a slowly rising slope which jolted the mare's hooves like packed dirt.

Because she had been anchored, and wild magic shone from her still, Linden was not overwhelmed by her passage through time and torment. She could still think, and feel, and choose. Although the intense glare of the sun filled her vision, effacing sight, her other senses reached out acutely. With the nerves of her skin, she felt Stave riding strongly on one side of her, impervious to the harm of the
caesure.
On the other side, Liand held his seat on Rhohm, clinging grimly to the Staff of Law. Protected by its warm clarity, he also was not as sick as he would otherwise have been.

Close on their heels followed Anele, as unmistakably himself as his inborn Earthpower could make him—and as unquestionably insane as the Fall at his back.

Behind Hrama ran three more Ranyhyn, all of them injured, but still essentially whole. For a moment, Linden could not tell if they bore riders. The rampant seething of the Fall and the sudden brightness of the sun blocked her perceptions. Then she discerned Mahrtiir clutching his appalled stomach at Anele's back; Pahni vomiting helplessly past Naharahn's withers; Bhapa stretched nearly unconscious along Whrany's neck. Blood throbbed from Bhapa's arm and shoulder, streaking his mount's torn flanks.

Beside the last Ranyhyn raced more than a dozen Waynhim and perhaps half that many ur-viles, all that remained of the bereft creatures which had committed their lives to Linden and the Staff.

And behind them came the Demondim in a teeming horde, ecstatic with power and ravenous for victims.

She had accomplished this much, if no more: she had brought her assailants with her out of the past; had defused their power to disrupt the integrity of time.

Now she would have to fight them. Hyn would be able to outrun the Demondim, but Linden's company could not flee indefinitely. The ur-viles and the Waynhim were badly hurt; close to exhaustion. And the Ramen were too ill to defend themselves. Pahni and Bhapa might not be able to sit their mounts much longer. Even Mahrtiir's aura felt fragile. The Manethrall could hardly contain the heaving of his stomach.

Linden had to make a stand.

She intended to turn and strike as soon as she could see.

As soon as she knew where she was. And
when.

If the Ranyhyn had misjudged their passage through the
caesure
—or if some effect of the Fall had cast them out prematurely—she might yet be in danger of altering the Land's history.

The midday brilliance of the sun still blinded her, however. While Hyn bore her racing over the hard ground, she blinked her eyes frantically, trying to clear the dazzle from her sight, and strove to extend her senses farther around her.

In spite of the sun's brightness, the air was cool on her sweating cheeks: it smelled of spring. And ahead of her the ground rose gradually, uninterrupted by swelling hills or narrow ravines or streambeds. She was no longer among the foothills of the Southron Range in late summer. Somehow Hyn's urgent run must have carried her out into the South Plains.

Or the Ranyhyn were able to navigate distance as well as time within a Fall. Linden and her companions may have crossed many leagues while they traversed the years.

But whatever the Ranyhyn had done, the Demondim had matched it. They could not have prevented Linden's Fall from engulfing them; yet they had emerged still on the heels of their prey. And their passage did not daunt them, or diminish their hunger
for slaughter. Stave had said that their lore was profound and oblique, reaching depths which had surpassed the Old Lords. Their understanding of
caesures
could easily be greater than Linden's.

And they were unexpectedly swift. They rushed forward as if they were boiling over the ground. For all her speed, Hyn pulled away from the harrying creatures slowly. Perhaps she could not run faster. Or perhaps she held back so that she would not outdistance the rest of Linden's companions.

Behind them, the Fall still moiled viciously. Linden had made it large, dangerously large, so that it would swallow all of the horde. Now its swirling forces seemed to blot out the world in that direction; and it flowed after the Demondim as though they sucked it in their wake.

Nevertheless Linden and those with her gained distance by increments, creating a small interval of safety between their desperation and the powers which pursued them.

How much time had passed? A score of heartbeats? Two score? In another moment, Linden told herself, when the gap was a bit wider, she would turn to counterattack.

With Covenant's ring, she might be able to slow the Demondim so that her companions could escape; but she feared to take the risk. Wild magic might inadvertently draw the Fall toward her too swiftly to be avoided, or feed its destructiveness in some way which she could not foresee.

As her vision began to clear, she deliberately silenced the argence shining through the fabric of her shirt. Then, without a word, as if she expected Liand to read her mind, she reached out for the Staff.

He did not fail her. Almost immediately, she felt the smooth wooden shaft slap into her palm.

Its touch sent a thrill of vitality through her, wiping away the last effects of the
caesure;
retrieving her from the harm which she had imposed on time. In some fundamental way, wild magic did not suit her: it was too extravagant and unpredictable for her. She was a physician by choice, trained to precision and care; and the teeming ramifications of Covenant's ring threatened at every moment to expand beyond her control.

In contrast, the Staff of Law was a healer's implement, as careful as any scalpel or suture. When she held it, she grew stronger: at once calmer and more capable, firmly poised between passion and restraint.

Elevated by the essential certainty of Law, she spoke a silent word to Hyn, nudged the mare with her heels. Without hesitation, Hyn peeled away from her course, carrying Linden in a steady curve out of the path of the other Ranyhyn and the Demondim-spawn, and back toward the onrushing horde.

Stave and Liand accompanied her as if they—or their mounts—had known exactly what she would do. But Hrama bore Anele onward with the Ramen thundering behind them, while the ur-viles and Waynhim scrambled to keep pace.

Moment by moment, blinking tears and brightness from her eyes, Linden regained her sight.

With her companions, she galloped down a slow, wide slope which stretched ahead of her until it vanished under the feet of the Demondim and was covered by the towering storm of the
caesure.
The sun and its shadows suggested that she was riding eastward.

As the Ramen raced past her in the opposite direction, she sensed that Mahrtiir had begun to rally. Hours or days or centuries ago, he had promised that he and his Cords would not again be crippled by the effects of a Fall. Now from a small pouch at his waist he fumbled out a leaf of dried
amanibhavam.
Crumbling it in his hand, he held it under his nose; inhaled a little of the sharp powder.

The potent grass stung him like a flick of lightning. A seizure took him, and he thrashed violently on his mount's back. But the spasm passed in an instant. When it ended, it left him restored and eager, galvanized for combat.

Guiding his stallion to Naharahn's side, he thrust his hand at Pahni's nose until she breathed in a taste of the
amanibhavam.
She, too, thrashed for a moment, then recovered visibly.

But Mahrtiir offered none of the leaf to Bhapa. The injured Cord lay unconscious along Whrany's neck, and might have been unseated by the healing grass. Instead the Manethrall left Bhapa to his mount's care and led Pahni after Linden toward the charging Demondim.

As soon as the last of the Waynhim and ur-viles had passed her, Linden called Hyn to a halt and looked out over the army of her attackers.

At her side, Liand stopped and stared in dismay. But Stave gazed at the Demondim like a man who had long ago forgotten how to be afraid.

Seen by daylight on the wide plain instead of by moonlight rising among the hills, the horde seemed less vast; no longer as measureless as night and slaughter. Nevertheless the sun did not diminish the creatures. Rather its glare seemed to accentuate their stature and potency.

Linden could not discern them precisely. They wavered in and out of definition as if they passed in front of a rippled glass. At one moment, they appeared as tangible as flesh and pain: at the next, they were translucent, nearly invisible. Whenever she tried to focus on a specific creature, it blurred away and then emerged several paces closer to her. And as the Demondim advanced, their forms steamed and frothed like acid.

Paled by sunlight, the flaring of power from their hands was barely visible to ordinary sight; but it howled at Linden's percipience. And it left behind stains of midnight which persisted in the air as if the inherent vitriol of the Demondim had burned holes in the substance of reality. Until the onrushing
caesure
swallowed those stains, they looked vicious enough to tear down trees and blast boulders.

Still the individual powers of the monstrous creatures were evanescent compared to the raving evil of the Illearth Stone. Among them the Demondim bore an outpouring of emerald so avid and malefic that it seemed to daunt the sun. From the vantage of higher ground and Hyn's back, Linden could see now that the dire green did not arise from any one place or creature among the horde. The Demondim carried no discrete fragment of the original Stone. Rather they appeared to bring its essence with them as if they could draw on it from some distant source.

“What will you do, Chosen?” demanded Stave. “Is it your purpose to give combat? That is madness. We must flee.”

The sound of his voice distracted her from the horde; and as soon as she understood what he had said, she remembered that he was right. She could not afford to unleash her power until she knew where she was, and when.